Middle Imperial Roman Speed Painting/Wash Experiments

The pangs of existential angst as I get on in life are certainly present in my mind of late. I've got a lor of lead, and a finite time in which to paint and play with it. With that in mind I've been experimenting with some rapid ways in which to get miniatures painted and on the tabletop. 

I started with some of the A&A Miniatures Middle Imperial Romans. These have literally had one base coat painted on top of the silver basecoat (leaving the armours out), then a wash from a mix I have concocted for heavily armoured miniatures and one highlight. That was it. If you leave the half an hour drying time of the wash out of the picture, it took next to no time at all to complete them which is exactly what I wanted. 

I have to be honest, compared to my normal standard these fellows are not very crisp or tight, the colour saturation is dull and it was a little painful to paint this way. The pain though, must be balanced against the expectation of being able to play with them and this is certainly something I want to do.

I should add, I'm very much looking forward to Adam Smith's new middle Imperial Roman AD Miniatures venture and I'm not so sure I could paint up the new AD stuff in the same manner as these. The A&A Miniatures moulds are not fresh and could do with remoulding IMHO as there was quite a lot of flash and a heck of a lot of cleaning up to do. 

There will also be some Wargames Foundry Franks painted up in a similar manner but with a different "magic potion" wash as they're less heavily armoured. Again, the aim is to get these toys on the table!  :>)

There are some mistakes on the miniatures, that will be cleaned up ASAP. The flesh on the helmet of one of the legionaries is particularly galling!

Cheers

28mm Late Roman Cataphract, Alternative to Oil Wiping Horses, Abbasid Naffatun

I have spent the last month or so trying to decide what it is I wanted to get painted for the Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge this year and have settled on Late Romans. A few years ago I was about to enter some Late Roman Cataphracts into the Challenge but encountered my first and only ever Varnishing Disaster; this pout me off the project entirely for a number of years..... until now! 

As a wee aside, and to quicken the process of painting up I'm going for "Wargames Standard" (I'm not getting any younger!) and have been trying to work out a way in which to use contrast paints as a substitute the oil wipe method, with the proviso that the contrast method had to be a notch higher (in my eyes) than anything I had managed to achieve with oil wiping horses in the past. I think I finally got to a point where I am happy with my new method; here's an incomplete Elven Steed showing off the basic results. Not too bad considering it is just a heavy drybrush of a medium to light grey over matt black with the contrast paint painted used not as a wash or a stain, but thickly as a coat of paint over the top of all that dry brushing. ikept the paint moving around the horse in order to avoid any pooling which would have resulted in more of a wash effect, not what I was after, It seems to have worked. There was however one snag which I'll come to in a wee bit.

I will go into more detail about the new fangled alternative to oil wiping in another article at a later date here on this blog. 

Speed Painted/Contrast on *Smooth Plastic* Elves Steed Experiment

Now onto why this method proved to be not so adaptable from plastic to metal.... metal castings, unless they are of the absolute finest quality, always have a degree of pitting from the moulds. Most of this is not visible until you apply something akin to a wash which obviously runs into all the crevices, when any pitting or mould lines not dealt with properly become very visible ASAP!  This was so on the metal Footsore  horse castings! A little but of an "ouch!" moment but as the aim is to get the miniatures out on the tabletop post haste so I'm not going to pull any of what is left of my hair out! 

Six Late Roman Cataphracts

10 Abbasid Naffatun

(Perry Miniatures, Musketeer Miniatures, Footsore Miniatures)

Cheers